3 tools for career planning

I often get asked what career planning tools I recommend. The answer is: There is not just one tool, as we are all different people and in different stages of our career. I am sharing the 3 tools that I am using for planning my career steps.
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Based on my personality I start every year with a vision board. From this vision board I derive 90 day targets. During the year I plan my action steps in a tool called ASANA. Here I can break down my annual goals into quarterly and monthly plans and even more granular levels. The last tool is simple and powerful – it is a focused journaling exercise. I am writing my “BOOK OF SUCCESS”. Let´s get started to dive deeper into these tools.

The Vision Board

To simplify it, a vision board is a type of visual tool that allows you to focus on a specific type of goal in your life. My personal approach is that I am one person and I have one life therefore I do a vision board for my life. My first one I started 15 years ago. Now I check in annually to recreate a new one and adjust my life goals if needed. Honestly, this did not change high level but the yearly vision boards have been a game changer.

 I did a life vision board when I was about to have my 2nd child to prepare myself for the time when I would be too busy to think about this. It was a classic vision board, and did represent the different areas of my life, like family and relationships, work and further education, finances, personal and home life, and anything else that was of importance to me.

Let´s look into the steps how to create your personal vision board
First you start to define the Purpose of Your Vision Board. You can focus on your professional life only or think bigger. I would recommend that you make it bigger as work and your career are parts of your life.
Next, the planning stage includes figuring out what to add to the vision board, not just in choosing the type of vision board. You want it to have purpose, whether that is to help you focus on your goals, plan better, organize your time or just act with more intention. Think of WHY you want a vision board and make a list of your top reasons. This is good to do during these early planning stages as a way to figure out which direction to go with your vision board.

Remember: with a vision board You Can Visualize Your Dreams
Visualizing you dreams through a vision board takes all of those thoughts and fantasies in your head and puts them right in front of you. Visualization is a very powerful tool that takes thoughts  and allows you to see what they would look like. I did write a blog about 5 reasons to create a vision board.

It Helps You to Prioritize
Another great reason to create a vision board is that you are able to prioritize. This works in a few different ways.
First of all, just setting up your vision board and choosing what you want on it gives you an idea of what is in the forefront in your mind. This doesn’t mean other items you didn’t choose right away aren’t important to you, but that you have certain priorities. It gives you an idea of what you might want to start working on first, since that is what your imagination is currently focused on.

They Work Great for Goal Setting
Speaking of goals, this is one of the best benefits of creating a vision board! Everyone has goals, whether small or big, short-term or long-term, personal or professional. Think of what you want to achieve someday, where you want to be, who you want to be surrounded by. These can give you an idea of what your goals are. The best thing is vision boards work for everyone read my blog article for further info here.

One way to set up your vision board is manually:
You take a board (or any flat surface) and add pictures and various other design elements to have a visualization of what you want, hope, dream, and strive for. There are not rules, it is your board – a collage of your ideas and visions. Another way is to do this electronically in Pinterest, in Canva or as a Power Point.
My preferred way is the manual one, take magazines, scissors and glue. Add some fabrics, some stickers, calendar pages, pictures … it is a meditative exercise for me. Getting inspiration, giving a picture to the thoughts in my head…. I am beaming myself to the places I want to be, to the situations, the events… day dreaming…

My vision board is visible for me in my office on the wall this way. Think about when you look at one of your Pinterest boards, and how you feel different emotions and even motivation while looking at it. This is similar to a vision board, though a digital version of it. In fact, this is likely where Pinterest got their idea from!
With a vision board, you have better incentive. It lets you see what you want out of life, gives you clear goals you want to achieve and helps keep you motivated and on track. You Gain More Focus and Intention

 As you might have guessed by now, the vision board is also a wonderful tool for having more focus and acting with intention. You look at your board every day, and have a better understanding of what your priorities are and where your time and attention should be focused.
You act with intention and purpose, by completing tasks related to these goals you have on your vision board. And this is where the next tools take over.

ASANA - a project management tool

 With your vision board in front of you, now start thinking what you can do this year to accomplish your goals. As we focus on career planning, ask yourself what do you want to have achieved at the end of the year. Pick three areas to focus on.
Setting Your Goals - Easy Said, Easier Done
The basics of setting goals give you short-term and long-term motivation and focus. They help you set focus on the acquisition of required knowledge and help you to plan and organize your resources and your time so that you can get the best out of your life. Setting clearly defined short term and long term goals will enable you to measure your progress and achieve personal satisfaction. How to set goals is another important topic that I will focus on in another blog. For today’s blog lets focus on the tools.
Enter the 1 year plan in Asana and break it down to quarterly and monthly targets.

Asana is a task management tool - nothing more and nothing less. You can use as well MS Outlook, MS Project or any other tool. I personally prefer ASANA. I think the first time I made contact with ASANA was during my yoga teacher training, and in yoga asana is a Sanskrit term. “Asana” is derived from the root term “asi” means “to be”. Simply, an Asana is a seat, a pose, or a posture. 
Meaning I might have been biased when selecting ASANA.
In Asana I make my 90 days plans broken down in monthly plans. In asana you can add a picture for every month so my basic method is that I have a mini vision board every month. You can use smaller pieces of your vision board or a quote. I do it in canva and use it as a screen saver on my mobile phone.
Each month, I make a list of what needs to be done, tasks to reach my quarterly and yearly goals. I ask myself: What Plans Do I Have This Month?

As asana is a project management tool it allows you to organize and share all your projects as lists or boards to keep records of all your initiatives, meetings, and programs. In the next step Asana allows you to break all your work down to small tasks and additional steps to complete overall tasks. You can enter details and assign due-dates to every task. You can also view all the tasks on the Asana work calendar. Additionally, it allows you to specify the due time, so that you don’t miss a deadline, and you can integrate it with e.g. Outlook. In short you can set, track, and manage your goals to achieve your milestones.

Charting your progress will also enable you to actually see the stages of completion leading to the actual realization of your goals. This eliminates the feeling of a long and pointless grind towards achieving your goals. Your self-confidence and level of competence will also improve as you will be more aware of your capabilities as you complete or achieve your goals. Careers are made by good time management practice. Failing in a career is often attributed to bad time management. Careers require a lot from an individual which often makes the career the life of the individual. 

So, now we have our vision and we have broken it down in actionable steps to ensure we grow every day. But how do we know we are tracking? Not task wise but success wise? This leads us to the last tool I am using and recommending the “Book of success”

Book of success

This is a powerful tool for confidence, interview preparation, resume writing and career planning.
In essence this is a daily Journaling exercise to document your personal success stories in this context focused on your work.
How to Get Started - Writing a book of success?
Getting started journaling isn’t something that you need to think about too hard. Yes, there are numerous types and styles of journals and ways to do this that may or may not be more effective. It depends on your personal style. But the easiest way is to simply get some paper (or your computer) and get started today.
Dust Off Your Pen and Paper – You don’t need anything special to keep a journal. In fact, purists believe that using pen and paper is the best way to journal because you can carry it with you anywhere and you don’t need technology. So, there will be no excuses.
Do it last thing in the evening – Don’t procrastinate about keeping your journal. It’s best to do it in the evening before you close your work day so that you have the right frame of mind to document your daily successes. Plus, you only need five to ten minutes, so it’s not that big of a deal. Plus, that way you can close your workday with something super positive - thinking about all the things you are proud of instead of things you’re worried about.
Begin with Today – Start right now and write about your day today. That’s the easiest thing to do. What success did you have at work? How did you feel about it? How did you achieve it? 
Start Simply – Don’t start being worried about style and substance right now; just work on the daily habit with pen and paper (or if it’s easier for you, a computer or smartphone). Don’t make it hard - just get going.
Write Every Single Day – Whenever you choose to do it, try to set it up so that it becomes a ritual and a habit. Journaling every single day is going to be more effective than just doing it when you feel like it.

Keeping a journal will help you deal with the things that happen to you as well as the things that have not happened to you. The main reason is that writing it down helps you remember what successes you already achieved. It helps you improve your decision-making capacity for similar situations. The main thing is just to get started journaling in any way that works for you. In reflecting your success stories it Makes You Consider Why and How – As you enter data into your journal.

Noting down and remembering your success stories help you for future challenges. It helps you avoid roadblocks in advance. It Provides a Permanent Record – Having a permanent record of the things you’ve done in your life, whether it’s personal or work, is a beautiful thing. Hardly anyone has a perfect memory, so you’ll maintain the success stories better with the record to look back at.

The book of success will help you achieve your goals because it will force you to think about them, consider the why and how, and delve deeper into the situation so that you can examine all sides of it.

I have shared the 3 tools that I am using when planning my career and the next career steps.  I start every year with a vision board. From this vision board I derive 90 day targets. During the year I plan my action steps in a tool called ASANA, here I can break down my yearly goals into quarterly and monthly plans and even into a more granular level. The last tool is a simple and powerful - is a focused journaling exercise I am writing my “BOOK OF SUCCESS”.

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